das ist eine tolle geschichte: nyt > "miss leavitt's stars": the female computer erzählt von henrietta leavitt, der die astronomie reichlich kenntnisse über die entfernung zwischen sternen verdankt, obwohl sie doch nur eine art ein-euro-job für pickering's harem erledigen sollte.

The Harvard College Observatory, at the forefront of exploiting photography, accumulated half a million plates during the early years of the 20th century. To analyze the images, Edward Pickering, the observatory's director, employed a company of women, mostly students or graduates of Radcliffe College, to measure the brightness, color and position of each star. They were paid a minimal wage to carry out the drudgery, freeing up the male astronomers to spend their nights staring into space.

These female computers -- the word originally meant a person who did the monotonous, repetitive, tedious work, not the modern machines that do all that for us -- were able to find moments in between the drudgery to speculate about their data. And since some of them were brilliant, they made serious changes in astronomy.